Traveling Suitcase Installation Project
Traveling Suitcase Installation Project
Francine K. Affourtit
Preview: Sunday 27th July 2015
Continues: Monday 28th – Sunday 2nd August 2015 12-5pm.
LOCATION: GENERATORprojects
GENERATORproject presents a Take Over event; Philadelphia based artist Francine K. Affourtit’s Traveling Suitcase Installation Project. Traveling to Dundee to create the work as a resident artist of Dundee Contemporary Art Print Shop, Francine produced a series of large-scale woodcut prints that can compress into a suitcase and reanimate into a sculptural installation. Following the creation of the work in Dundee, the Traveling Suitcase Installation Project will embark on an expedition of short-term pop-up exhibitions in Dundee, Weimar, Venice, Berlin and London – beginning with GENERATORprojects.
The process of compressing objects into their most compact and portable form has fascinated me since childhood. Portability translated into the potential for travel and adventure; the lure of unknown shores coupled with a self-sufficiency that transcended place. Much like the magic of Mary Poppin’s suitcase filled with an incomprehensible host of items and objects, I longed to conjure an illusion of the impossible.
The Traveling Suitcase Installation Project is an attempt to reach that dream. Starting with a residency at Dundee Contemporary Art to produce a series of large-scale woodcut prints that can compress into a suitcase and reanimate into a sculptural installation. Following the creation of the work in Dundee, the Traveling Suitcase Installation Project will embark on an expedition of short-term pop-up exhibitions in Dundee, London, Berlin, Weimar and Venice.
Creating a method that allows me to travel compactly with an art installation, gives me the opportunity to ask questions about how contemporary culture broadcasts visual experience. Through the creation of the work, I am researching ways to utilize digital processes to create singular art objects (installations) that I will physically travel with to various locations, inverting the ways that digital information allows for instantaneous but ephemeral reach. By forming the traveling exhibition format, I am asking questions about the precarious balance of life as an artist and the ways in which we attempt to mediate that balance. Additionally, the suitcase and I represent my position as a foreign traveler, while also alluding to the nature of artist residencies and art fairs as a means to disseminate visual experience.
Join me on this voyage toward the improbable.
Francine Kay Affourtit (1975) is a Philadelphia based artist, educator and arts organiser. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Tyler School of Art as a Temple University Fellow.
As an arts educator, Francine has worked with various institutions and programs, including Tyler School of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, and as a resident artist with Urban Gateways. As an arts organiser, Francine contributed to the development of several institutions, including the Student Union Gallery
Program at SAIC where she served as Exhibition Director, by Co-founding the exhibition organisation VERGE that was active in Chicago from 1998-2006, and working with the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, first as Director of the EFA Studio Program and then as a development consultant until 2012. Francine has exhibited her work internationally, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the International Print Centre of New York, and Temple Gallery in Rome, Italy. Francine has attended several residencies globally, including The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Greece, The Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College, Cheltenham Centre for the Arts in Pennsylvania, and Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California.